Harvard astronomer argues that alien vessel paid us a visit

Re:Harvard astronomer argues that alien vessel paid us a visit by rctec on Monday February 08, 2021 @07:38AM (#26063668)

After reading more of "Harvard astronomer"'s comments, I think "paid us a visit" is a bit pointed and unfair.

Considering the unknown odds and likelihood of life/ intelligent life in the universe, ranging from nil to high, it isn't unreasonable to propose that exceptionally unusual space junk is just that - flotsam or jetsam from others. We're certainly on track to be discarding large amounts of our own across the universe. Compare to the amount of plastic in the ocean - it has to go somewhere.

Even if it acted under its own power, that doesn't mean that "it came here to spy on us", or that it noticed us at all. Even speculating on the purpose and function goes beyond reasonable, and Loeb doesn't.

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Re:Harvard astronomer argues that alien vessel paid us a visit by gus_massa on Monday February 08, 2021 @07:55AM (#26063808)

I agree [1], just nitpicking:

> Even if it acted under its own power,

He doesn't claim it's self powered. He claims that it may have the form of a sheet instead of the form of the cigar. This shape is similar to a solar sail[2], and the shape cause a small acceleration by the solar light.

[1] Every time this is repost, I'd like to repost an angry rant about pushing the "alien" solution for a problem where we clearly have not enough data.

[2] That is casually his research field.

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Re:Harvard astronomer argues that alien vessel paid us a visit by ericol on Monday February 08, 2021 @07:53AM (#26063787)

Last week the Spanish side of Vice published a post that literally said in the title "Most famous Harvard astronomer said aliens tried to contact us".

I think that beats everything else I've read so far regarding this issue.

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Re:Harvard astronomer argues that alien vessel paid us a visit by InitialLastName on Monday February 08, 2021 @09:03AM (#26064554)

OTOH, his claims have actually probably made him the most famous Harvard astronomer. I pay little attention to astronomy, and I certainly can't name any other Harvard astronomers.

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Re:Harvard astronomer argues that alien vessel paid us a visit by criddell on Monday February 08, 2021 @08:23AM (#26064054)

He was on Sean Carroll's podcast and he sounded pretty reasonable to me. He clearly doesn't think "aliens" is the only or necessarily even the best explanation, just one that can't be eliminated and it's worth thinking about.

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Re:Harvard astronomer argues that alien vessel paid us a visit by ethbr0 on Monday February 08, 2021 @08:42AM (#26064283)

One thing that I'm curious about. Where and when did it come from?

(A) Assuming sub-light travel, (B) no energy/mass-intensive interstellar major course corrections, (C) planetary origin... shouldn't we be able to work out where and when it was last in the vicinity of a viable source?

And at the distances (and therefore timescales) we're talking about, we might also hit low-metallicity systems... which would make intelligent, space-faring life less likely.

(Not impossible, but getting around convenient chemistry at a civilization-scale seems unlikely)

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Re:Harvard astronomer argues that alien vessel paid us a visit by throwaway316943 on Monday February 08, 2021 @04:05PM (#26070101)

It’s hard to tell since it’s velocity is very close to the mean of the velocities of systems in our local neighborhood. We do know that it probably passed close to another system (Oort cloud distance) but no exact origin has been identified.

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